


Mala's Patternwalk

by Mala (PatternWalker)



Series: Mala; Journey into Amber [1]
Category: Chronicles of Amber-Roger Zelazny
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 05:44:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19289350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatternWalker/pseuds/Mala
Summary: Fiona, jealous of Julian's interest in his granddaughter, trumps her to the Pattern in the basement of Castle Amber and pushes her onto it. Mala, still recovering from injury and poisoning, doubts her ability to stay the course. Mala draws on hard-to-reach internal resources by making a mantra of her lover, Lord Benedict's name, and pulls more help than she had expected.Julian rages at Fiona about her action, causing a breach in their relationship, and Benedict calls for Random and Vialle to be peacemakers as they all watch Mala attempt to navigate the Pattern.





	Mala's Patternwalk

    Rima had left a message with Alden that when I woke, I could find herself and Lord Benedict at the market having lunch, and I should join them if I wished. Alden was happy reading in the garden, so I went alone.  
    I was still pretty banged up from being ambushed a couple of days ago and felt a lot like a wet dishrag, but if I didn't get out, it would take me longer to get better.I was entering the market square when someone grabbed my arm, and I turned to see Lady Fiona, her other hand holding a Trump. Almost immediately, she pulled, and with a confusion of my senses, I was in a room dark but for the blue-white lines of the Pattern.  
    "Come along," she hissed, and hauled me toward the shining loops and whorls. I tried putting on the brakes, but I was merely human strong, and barely slowed our progress. I saw us approaching what was likely the entrance to the glowing maze.       
    "Fiona! Please don't do this! Let me at least be full strength!"  
    "You phony bitch! You will always have an excuse, and Julian will always believe it." She gave me a shove, and my right foot came down on the end of the glowing line.   
    Sparks sizzled around my foot. Shit, shit, shit. No hope for me now. I saw Fiona's eyes widen. Hell, she was the one who had spoken of clones; had she really thought I wasn't Amber stock? "Thanks for the death sentence, Auntie," I snarled as I turned to face my doom, and began putting one foot in front of another, to strive once again, in another totally alien environment, to survive.  
    Step, step, and a chill passed over me; small shocks made my muscles twitch, and electricity crackled as my hair rose to stand on end. I’d never liked electricity much, but I remembered the ‘hot seat’ that one of the gay men had brought to queer S/M events back where I’d come from and was able to channel the sensations into that memory.  
    It wasn't hard at first, walking that shining line with the sparks rising higher every step along that first arc, as it doubled back on itself. About a dozen steps more and I felt resistance building, probably the beginning of the First Veil, and I began to worry about my stamina. Benedict had said that the Veils, First through Third, were increasingly difficult, and I was already having trouble making it through the First. There I go, psyching myself out…The veil pushed back at me, and it became a hellish effort to move my feet, but I kept leaning into it, trying to remember to breathe deeply instead of pant. Then the Veil—parted, just like that, and I nearly stumbled as I moved on past it. And memories I hadn’t accessed for years swept in.  
    I remembered…coming home from my third day at school—I was six—and finding Grandmother Felicia in the kitchen sobbing with a glass of bourbon in front of her and the bottle in the middle of the table. Father and Mother had been killed in an auto accident.  
    I came to myself, sparks to my knees now, not sure where anything outside the Pattern was; maybe the Pattern was all there was. Kinda like that song Grandmother had liked about the guy who could never get off the subway ‘cuz they’d raised the price while he was riding. I moved along.  
  
    Rima radiated happiness at her lover. "It's such a glorious day! I hope Mala decides to come join us." Abruptly, she looked haunted. "Benedict? I should have helped! She shouldn't have had to fight alone!"  
    Benedict looked down at her and put his arm around her shoulder. "Rima. You did help. She lacks the experience to fight and handle a Trump at the same time. Your job, which you did well, was to call for help. The poison on the assassins’ swords was already weakening her. You saved her life, sweetheart, just as she saved yours."  
    "Oh." Rima looked up at Benedict. Her brow smoothed. "I hadn't thought of it that way."  
    "Thought of what?" Julian pulled another chair to the table and sat.  
    "Rima was thinking that she hadn't done her share the other night," Benedict replied.  
    Julian shook his head. "You kept your head, did as she told you, and got help. But for you she'd be dead now. And it was too close as is." Something caught his eye across the market square. "There's Mala now. And Fiona? What the hell?"  The others turned just in time to see Fiona grab Mala's arm, the two of them turn two dimensional and disappear. Julian reared to his feet. "Shit! Where did they go?"  
    Benedict gripped Julian's arm. "Sit, Julian. And think: we know Fiona's been unhappy about Mala. Where would she have reason to take her?"  
    Julian's face paled with shock. "The Pattern. Fiona's developed this denial about Mala being Amber." Julian shook his Trump deck out of its case across the table. He picked out the Pattern Trump as soon as it showed, and Rima quickly gathered the rest of them, took the case from Julian's hand, cased them, and handed them back. "Please let me come with you."  
    "Of course." Benedict took her outstretched hand in his left, offered his damaged arm to Julian, and bystanders were treated to their second Trump departure in five minutes. Such departures were legendary, but rarely seen by ordinary folk. Those who saw both departures wouldn't have to pay for drinks for a week at least.  
      
They arrived just in time to hear Mala thank Fiona for the death sentence, too late to help. Benedict and Rima stood staring at Mala, Benedict leaning forward as though to help her forge her way, Rima with tears streaking down her face. Julian, his face a thundercloud, bore down on Fiona, who now stood with hand over mouth, staring after Mala.   
    "What the hell were you thinking?" Then, grabbing Fiona's shoulders, "You--Stupid. Cunt!"  
    "Take your hands off me!" Fiona snarled.  
    Julian's eyes narrowed. "Yes, certainly; from here on out," he returned, taking a step back and Fiona paled with anger.  
    "You would pick her over me?"  
    "Should I have to? I've never expected fidelity of you, and have never been aware that you expected it of me. And, as you see, she is of Amber blood."  
    "Then why did she call it a death sentence?" Fiona asked challengingly.  
    "Because two nights ago, she was wounded and poisoned--and your antidote worked, by the way--and she is still weak and shaky." He swallowed, and looked out over the Pattern at Mala, still moving, but slowly. "Was."  
    Fiona shook her head in puzzlement. "Why do you care?"   
    Julian tilted his head at her. "I'm still figuring it out.  I think...that I like the fact that I have a known descendant...that is so resilient. She's tough, Fiona, even never having walked the Pattern. I've  been able to get her to fold, but it's not easy. And she is not afraid to tax me about forcing sex on her."  
    "What?" Fiona looked at him oddly.  
    "I have. And in one case, she referred to it as me raping her hello. I observed that she had enjoyed it, and she said that was beside the point, that I seemed, ah, constitutionally incapable of asking before I acted."  
    "Why should you? You are a Prince of Amber."  
    "For which she cares nothing. I suspect the only reason she hasn't tried to put a knife in my kidney in the midst of sex is that Benedict has given consent for me to use her." He sighed. "As long as I follow his guidelines. I made the mistake of trying to challenge his limits with respect to her, thinking he had grown soft." He raised an eyebrow. "I was quite mistaken."  
    "What happened?" Fiona's brow furrowed.  
    "It will be a while before I am ready to discuss that,” he replied with a grimace.  
  
 Benedict pulled his trump case out, and found King Random's card. When contact was established, he told Random, "I have need of you; are you with Vialle? I have need of her as well."   
    Random turned his head and spoke to someone in the room, then turned back to Benedict. "She has been sculpting, and says her clothes are a mess."  
    "Random. We are not having high tea, we are having a crisis. Please bring her if she will come. She may be able to keep me from killing Fiona."  
  
    “What?" Julian asked, seeing Fiona’s gaze seeking someone or something behind him.  
    "What are Random and Vialle doing here?"  
    Julian turned and looked. “Odd place for a family garden party.”  
  
I came to myself, almost at a standstill, and took a deep breath, forging forward; keep moving, keep moving, even if only a smidgeon. Do. Not. Stop. Now I was getting weird body feelings; pins and needles, hot and cold, and the electrical currents coursing through me. Several more steps, easy ones, took me to the end of the arc I was traversing, and there was a straight stretch in front of me. Resistance began to build as I took my first step. I reached down mentally to my center, and began to mutter the mantra I now used to accomplish things that seemed impossibly hard: Benedict...Benedict...Benedict....and kept pushing forward. Inching, inching, with the glare of the Pattern surrounding me.He and Rima were likely wondering where I was. Never mind. Get through this. Benedict...Benedict...Benedict….I made my effort here into a submissive's offering to him. My eyes on the line, I heard his voice, "Hello?" and looked up, and up, into his face. Something different there, but definitely Benedict.  
    I shook my head distractedly. "I have to keep moving."  
    He moved back as I moved forward. "Yes, of course. " The crane look. "Do I know you, young lady?" I almost stopped cold. "Keep moving," he reminded me.   
    "Thank you," I replied, stunned. What the hell? There was this little bell ringing in the back of my brain, but so much was going on that I was having trouble retrieving the relevant fact. "I am your aide and lover, Mala."   
    He looked puzzled. “I remember my aide as being Aldo, who is male. But no matter," he shrugged. "You seem to be calling for my aid; how may I be of assistance to you?"  
    "It's complicated," I replied.  "In short, I am Julian's granddaughter, abducted, brought to the vicinity of Amber and abandoned by Dalt. I have become your lover--" Oh! Right..."Sir, may I see your hands?" He held up two, fully formed. "Ah, that explains it," I said. "The Benedict I know had his right arm taken off in battle just below the elbow."  
    His eyebrows went up. “Clumsy of me. So what exactly does that explain? Keep moving," he reminded me.  
    "Ah..." choose your words carefully, Mala. "This is going to sound odd, but I think you are tied to the Pattern I am walking, what Corwin’s son Merlin calls a Pattern ghost. "  
    "Indeed....Keep moving."  
    "Thank you, sir, for the reminders."  
    "And yet, you treat me as if I am more than that--a ghost."  
xx    "When I needed help, you responded; you are all I have right now of the man I love and respect and serve, and I appreciate that you are willing to aid me." I kept moving along the long arc toward the Second Veil.  
    "So," he prompted, "You have become my lover, and--"  
    "Also, regrettably, Grandfather's, though I think of myself as a target of opportunity for Julian." Benedict nodded, unsurprised. "And Fiona feels that I am a bad influence on Julian, and has forced me onto the Pattern when I am still recovering from poisoning and injury." I grimaced. “She sought to prove that I was not Amber stock.”  
    "Ah. Indeed. And you look so much like Julian.” He shook his head. “So what can I do to help you?"  
    "I'm not sure? Keep me walking, command me when I falter? You heard me call you because I was focusing on you as a way of transcending my limits. I'm not sure that there is a lot you can do directly. I just don't know!" I was heading toward hysteria.  
    "Calm, Mala. Calm yourself and breathe consciously."  
    "Thank you, sir." I took another step as sparks rose higher.  
    He backed away several feet. "Now come to me."   
    I pushed harder and heard Pattern Benedict murmur, “Good, good.” The glare of the Pattern felt like a huge x-ray machine, shining through me, changing me. Would I even know who I was if I survived this? If?  Dammit! I had the best help in the metaverse, right in front of me.  I was going to make it through this. I took several more steps. The resistance continued to climb.   
    “Mala, come to me. Come child, you can do this. Push at the resistance. Come to me, now." And he was right before me, just out of reach. I was not sure that I had ever done anything more physically difficult. Shit. But this was the Second Veil. And Benedict could pull effort out of me that I didn't know was there. And he was with me now, coaching, encouraging. I pushed, I pushed, and my feet barely moved. Electricity crackled as my hair rose to stand on end. It felt like walking through a wall of thick, partly frozen molasses would feel, almost as if the part of the Second Veil I had already passed was trying to pull me back. An eternity, and abruptly, I was through. I gave Benedict an exhausted smile, and saw his stern face soften just a bit. “Good,” he said.   
    Then we had several turns that felt like they’d been set with a ruler, and I wondered momentarily how they got mixed in with all the curves of the Pattern. A cascade of memories: being 4 or 5 and seeing Grandmother gaze at my father with great affection, then a twitch and her expression turned to loathing. Being 7 and seeing her glare at herself in the mirror. Being 12, and for the first time seeing her look at me with loathing. “What’s wrong, Grandmother? What did I do?” And her sigh, and response, as she took me in and cuddled me, “I’m so sorry, Mala. I don’t mean to do it; we all look so much like *that man*—I knew who she meant—“and I came to hate him so much while I was his prisoner, that sometimes I look at me, or I used to look at your father, and today, gods forgive me, I looked at you, and I see him.”  Her voice clogged and I looked up to see unshed tears standing in her eyes. I hugged her back. “Grandmother? Thank you for explaining? I’ll try not to take it personally.” Sometimes, though, I just couldn’t help it…  
    I came to myself again, once again slowing. Damn, the memories were distracting. Another curve, and my feet felt like I walked in drying glue; 1…2…3…4…    Ah, I was 12. I had just returned from the library to find Felicia’s current boyfriend, Gerald, in the house. “Ah! There you are!” he exclaimed. “Come over and sit with me.” I said that I had homework to do; a lie, that’s what I had gone to the library to do, but I didn’t like being around him. When I passed into the next room, he bounced off the sofa and came after me. “You think you’re too good to hang out with me, do you?” he snarled, grabbing me by the arm. I reiterated that I had homework to do. “You can do that after we get to know each other better,” he insisted.  
    “I don’t want to know you better.” I tried to pull out of his grasp. “Ow! Let go!”  
    “Oh, not a chance, chickie,” and he pulled me toward him. I locked my elbow and shoved my left hand against his chest. He grabbed my wrist with his other hand and pulled my brace away, dumping me against him, already groping me with his other hand. “Boy, you sure don’t have much tittage, do you?”  
    “Get off me, you sonofabitch!” I yelled. I tried to knee him, but of course, he was expecting that, so I kicked him in his right shin. He swore and pulled back his arm to punch me, then screamed and collapsed to his knees, grabbing his elbow and groaning. I was left standing, facing Felicia, who was winding up for another swing with my softball bat. I held up a warding hand. “Wait!”  
    She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why?” she snarled.  
    “Is he worth going to jail over?”  
    “That’s already gonna happen,” Gerald choked out.  
    Oh, that pissed me off. “You really think so?” I looked over him at Felicia. “Go ahead, Grandmother, but belt him once in the kidneys for me before you crack his skull.”  
    Felicia had benefitted from the short intermission, though, and merely moved around to face him as I moved out of his sight. “What I really want to do is crack your skull into pieces small enough to fertilize the garden. Which would make you a least a bit useful. But I will settle for you leaving town within the next 12 hours. If either of us ever sees you again, I will kill you.”  
    “But honey—“  
    “Call me that again, you pervert, and I won’t wait.”  
    He lurched to his feet, tears in his eyes from the pain, reached the open door and went through it.      
    “Mala!” Benedict’s voice cracked like a whip, pulling me from my thoughts. “Keep moving!”  
    “Y-Yessir!” I stuttered, stepping again toward him, and finding movement now easy. Another dozen easy steps brought me up to a lacework pattern of flame blocking the path. Damn, that was pretty; and I couldn’t even stop to admire it, just had to push on through it. Pattern Benedict appeared before me; huh…where had he been a minute ago?   
    “Mala; step very carefully going through the fire screen, there will be currents that try to move you off the path,” he informed me.  
    “Thank you, sir; I appreciate your assistance more than I can ever express.” I stepped forward into the fiery maelstrom.  
    I remembered the alley where my first serious boyfriend raped me against a wall after I had told him that I had just had a vaginal wart removed and had been told by the doctor not to have sex for three or four days. And afterwards, he told me I had asked him to, then said it didn’t matter, then said someone else had done it until I was so confused and resentful that I sought out Grandmother’s fuckbuddy Butch to help me sort it out, and ended breaking up with him.  
    “Mala! Be careful where you step!” Pattern Benedict’s voice pulled me out of my reverie once again, and I looked at my feet. The left one was right at the edge of the shining path, and my next step would have taken me off it. I gasped, “Thank you, sir!” and corrected my placement. I don’t know how I heard him, the fire was crackling, and I could barely see him in/through it. I took two more steps and emerged from the flame onto the sweeping glow of the Grand Curve. Movement came easier here as I passed along it, then along three smaller curves and into a straight line, at the end of which were three short sharp arcs. This led into a wilderness of right angle turns, I think 10, that would have disoriented me if I hadn’t already been so. And dizzy; it made me dizzy! I traversed another short arc and there it was, a straight path to the Third Veil. Every step the pressure seemed to double; after the second step, I had no idea how I would take the third, then I heard Pattern Benedict say, “Come to me, Mala,” and I managed to move my foot. I was breathing hard, and it hurt, gods how it hurt, and as I struggled to take the fourth step, I heard his voice again. “Come, Mala, push through; I know it feels solid, but you can do it. I have faith in you.”  
    I laughed at the edge of hysteria and replied, “Then I’d better do it, hadn’t I, sir?” and I pushed and leaned, and leaned. Lifting my foot for the step took an eternity, and another eternity to move it through the solidity that barred my way and down again. Sparks rose to my waist.   
    “Good, good.”  
    Two eternities, another step. Sparks to my chest now.   
    “Excellent.”  
    And I shoved myself into that concrete wall that was the Third Veil; and somehow managed one more step. There were sparks at my shoulders; I leaned forward and they were in my eyes and all about me. I couldn’t see Pattern Benedict! I started to panic. “Sir? Are you there?”  
    “Indeed,” came his response. “One more step and you will be past the Veil.”  
    “I don’t think I can do it,” I was headed for hysteria again, and almost too exhausted to feel it.  
    “You can,” he asserted emphatically. “Do not lose heart now. Step.”   
    A direct order, and I could not possibly disobey. I pulled my foot up a fraction of an inch, muscles screaming, and leaned, and when the foot came down, I was free of the Third Veil. I managed not to fall, though damn, I was getting really shaky. One last short arc to walk more easily and recover my breath, and I ran into a brick wall. Three steps to go; I could see the center—not clearly, because of the sparks that enveloped me, but it was so near, and yet, so far. I had to force my way through what felt like a brick wall, and I didn’t even think I could lift my foot. Slide it, then.   
    “Lean, Mala!” Pattern Benedict murmured in my ear. “Challenge the resistance.”  
    I visualized myself picking away at the brick (as I thought of it) in front of me, making a hole in it for my body to slide into…and my foot moved, Leaning into it, picking, picking away at the resistance, tears of effort and frustration running down my face. Move, you son-of-a-bitch! And I was able to slide my foot for the second step. Rage roiled up and out of me, boiled into the wall and the wall crackled. “Ah, elegant solution,” I heard Pattern Benedict say. And then the resistance parted in front of me and practically pulled me through, as if into a vacuum. Step 3. And there I was, shaking, weak as a kitten, fending off collapse, but I had made it!  
    Turning, I saw Pattern Benedict still there, looking slightly melancholy. I was barely able to remain upright, but I stepped back toward him, being careful not to step on the Pattern.   
    "Thank you, sir. I could not have done it without you."  
    He smiled, a bit sadly. "I am sorry to have to say goodbye. I would love to know you better.”  
    "Then look for me. Now that I have, with your help, traversed the Pattern, I may have left a ghost as well."  
    He reached out and put one hand on the back of my head. It didn't exactly feel solid--buzzy, more--but served to bring my face closer to his, and he kissed me gently. "Good luck," he said, “I am not the easiest of men to live with,” and was gone.  
    I turned to look around the room, from my center-of-the-Pattern vantage point. My walk seemed to have gathered quite a crowd. Fiona, looking unhappy, was still there, standing beside Julian, who was looking grim, Benedict and Rima, both looking extremely relieved, and Random and Vialle,  
      
And if I stood here much longer, I would collapse.I wished to be with Benedict, and next I knew, I was. Rima was beside him; I wiped a tear away from her cheek and turned to look up at Benedict. His expression was as hungry as I felt. I felt myself sway and his arms closed around me. As he lifted me into a carry, I murmured, "See, I came back," and there seemed to be a bit of moisture in his eyes.  
  



End file.
